Another animal/creature edition of OC x fountain pen.
2 WHSmith school pens (made by...Platignum?), frankenpened together to make the most matching Bugslu body. Bugslu is rainbow coloured but most of their body is green. While I don't have any blue/red in this mix, hopefully it is close enough ahaha.
Interestingly the nib itself is a folded steed nib, not tipped. Apparently this means that the nib may wear out faster than a tipped one.
Today's music post: Perch Privileges by Nature's Neighbor from their album, O t h e r s i d e.
Sure my last two fountain pen x OC posts were about human original characters, but my fondness for my animal/creature characters is has no bounds.
After looking at my pen lineup it was clear that I had mostly dark-coloured accented pens.
When I thought about Pinkey, I was torn between the newer Kaweco Perkeo in peony blossom, but was always drawn to the Pilot Kakuno in soft pink because of the colour ratios, but I didn't want two of the same pen!! I heard Perkeos have Bock 5 nibs, which I've never tried.
WELL too bad, I broke my rule of not having 2 of the same pen!!!!!! For PINKEY!!!
Discovered the nib had a different smiley face than my other kakuno (unknowingly) so now I feel justified to have both of these kakunos. I'm searching for the perfect shading pink ink. The one in this pen right now is Sailor Shikiori Sakuramori, and the paper is Rhodia.
If there was a world where I could get both of these re-tipped to a thicker wetter nib (more like a broad/stub) I would be very tempted! Though the costs would be astronomical compared to the base pen, haha. Stubby pen for stubby legged Pinkey...a dream.
Today's music post: Golden ft. Kid Fonque & D-Malice by Sio. The entire FEATURES album is also GOLDEN...!
Bea sent me some loose paper to do paper tasting, THANKS! Her pack included:
- Borden and Riley #41 tracing paper
- Crane Lettra 297gsm
- Levenger dot grid (from Behance journals?)
- Loomis and Toles (now Deserres) Superbond 15lb
- Muji grid
- Neenah paper, classic crest, stipple 118gsm
Separately I joined PowersWithin's paper order for some Cosmo Air Light 75gsm.
- Bleed: none
- Sheen: pretty good!
- Shading: nice!
- Feathering: none
- Texture: can be slippery
- Other: ink line gets a lot fatter; other side is unusable because it's tracing paper (super ghosty); ink colours seem lighter because of translucency
- Bleed: none (paper is thick)
- Sheen: none
- Shading: very subtle, if at all
- Feathering: not much
- Texture: has some grain; originally for letterpress
- Other: nib feels dry when writing on this paper, everything becomes finer
Levenger dot grid (for Behance)
- Bleed: none
- Sheen: none
- Shading: decent
- Feathering: none
- Texture: kinda smooth but has some resistance?
- Other: I was surprised at how well this paper performed. I used to use this paper at work 5+ years ago...
- Bleed: none
- Sheen: very subtle
- Shading: decent
- Feathering: none
- Texture: has some tooth
- Other: nib feels dry when writing on this paper, everything becomes finer. Not sure if it's the paper/pen/ink or something else that is causing the skipping for some pens/inks (like there is a more specific "sweet spot" for the nib/ink when using this paper). Kind of reminds me of Borden and Riley visual bond
- Bleed: some, for the very wet inks
- Sheen: none
- Shading: very subtle, if any; inks get flattened out
- Feathering: some, paper is pretty absorbent
- Texture: pretty smooth
- Other: if you use light colour inks or thin nibs, this is a very reasonable alternative
- Bleed: none
- Sheen: barely
- Shading: some
- Feathering: none
- Texture: stippled, your nib won't glide on this paper
- Other: inks also feel dryer to me when I use this paper, but not as much as some of the others
- Bleed: none
- Sheen: pretty good
- Shading: seems high contrast
- Feathering: none
- Texture:
- Other: ink lines get fatter; the paper is thicker than I thought, so went I went to make a notebook out of it, I didn't end up using as many pages as I thought I could for a single signature!
My top 3 from this batch
- Cosmo Air Light 75gsm
- Borden and Riley #41
- Levenger
Today's music post: Thumbing Thru Foliage by YUNGMORPHEUS & ewonee
Done one journal/notebook insert, so time for new paper tasting! Still using the traveller style cover for 2 notebooks: planner and journal.
Thoughts on the system so far
I've been marking down key events on the calendar view. I also track when I publish a post and what media I engaged with too. After the month is over, I write a short reflection on the right hand side. In some ways the calendar view will serve as a table of contents for the journal entries...?
Good! I like having a dedicated book for the planner part, and another dedicated book for the journal part. I wasn't sure this habit tracker would be relevant but it has at least two benefits:
- Tracking what I've done, and when, as a method of recall and reminder
- Great excuse to get inks flowing in my pens
My pen writing rotation is like 2 weeks long now. I can't help but want at least 1 pen per ROYGBIV colour, and then there are the pens that I only use for waterproof occasions (that I don't actually journal with). 2 separate slimmer notebooks/inserts also means that my hand doesn't ever get to the edge of a page/book and I have to do the slightly uncomfortable/brief "hover" (where there is a large "step" between your notebook height and the table/working surface). I thought that I could potentially be annoyed by the elastic system (sometimes it feels looser than it should be) but it's not a deal breaker.
I filled this one with journal entries for January - February.
There are a few problematic inks, but those inks tend to be problematic on various higher quality papers that I have:
- always Sailor Kobe kounan maroon
- sometimes Noodler's Eel cactus fruit
- sometimes FPR royal flush blue
Otherwise I like that the paper absorbs the ink quickly, though at the expense of sheen. I don't care as much about sheen as I do about shading! I'm swapping this insert out for the one below.
Incoming journal: Kleid 2mm grid notes A5, 2mm grid
I thought I'd use something with some ruling this time because of how crooked I wrote in the other one/
These ones use OK Fools paper, which according to the maker...
OK Fools was the first Fool's Cap paper produced in Japan by Ohtori Paper. In Japan, the term "Fools Paper" has long been used to refer to high-end writing paper. British Fool's Cap paper was first imported into Japan in the late 1800s. The popular Japanese version was produced at the Oji Ogura Factory, where the name OK comes from. While the current iteration is being made by Nippon Paper Industries' Yatsushiro Factory, they have kept the OK name for brand recognition.
I have the one with the blue cover. The cover itself also has the 2mm grid pattern printed in light blue ink, and there's some silver stamp foil in the bottom. There's also an informational belly band (is it still a belly band if it runs vertical?) that is removable.
- 32 sheets / 64 pages
- 2mm graph paper
- white paper
- side-sewn bound
The grid pattern itself is very small and I wouldn't say it looks visually obtrusive, but some it does seem to resist water-based fountain pen inks, so if you were writing really small, the grid might break up your writing. I'm personally not sure what I would use a 2mm grid for, that I can't achieve in a bigger grid, but I mainly just write or doodle freeform.
When held up to the light, the paper also has some regular columnar watermark and another emblem (probably some manufacturer logo?) that appears in different spots, depending on where the page was cut.
As anticipated, all the inks did good, aside from the usual suspects (already listed above). I think the shading is fine, but maybe sheen feels less obvious than some other papers I've used.
For an ink that's more expensive, I'm surprised that Sailor Kobe kounan maroon feathers and bleeds through on so many of my higher quality papers (using EF nib). I finally finished my sample and am quite please to be RID OF IT.
I found a new favourite pangram:
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
I like to imagine Jake and Austin trying to use a fax machine on my behalf.
After using the 2mm grid for a bit, I have to say that I'm not a fan, primarily because when I'm writing fast, I can't "track" what line I'm currently on and how much line spacing to use when moving to a new line (line break). The paper is otherwise quite nice!
Today's music post: Unspoken by Moderator.
Another edition of OC x Fountain pen HAHA. Previous one was Austin x Fountain pen...this time it's Jake!!
TA+D Fiber Bamboo Fountain Pen
The specific pen I paired with Jake is the TA+d (TreAsia-design, Taiwan) Fiber bamboo fountain pen with a Schmidt steel iridium point nib in F point.
I like the tag line on the box that says "Write like nobody's reading" which is precisely what I'm do for anything I make.
The pen comes with (I assume) a Schmidt converter and an international small cartridge. Looking at the interior barrel of the pen and size of the converter, I think it could fit a regular/long cartridge too.
Everything about the pen is pretty understated and minimal, which is very much Jake's aesthetic from an apperance POV. There are some subtle striations on the aluminum pen body, a magnetic cap, and a little bamboo stub on the back-end. These choices seem to be both practical and for design aesthetic. The cap can't be posted, but its magnetic powers do allow it to function as a pen rest.
This is definitely a pen that has a risk of rolling away on your table...possibly plummeting to catastrophe (also very Jake-like HAHA). It is also quite weighted (~32g with ink + converter) compared to some of my other pens, so it feels durable from a functional POV. Jake is a sturdy seeming person, but also carries a lot of emotion weight inside of him (at this point, I'm making things up about how the pen pairs up with the OC).
I didn't have a Schmidt nib nor a minimal-leaning pen in my collection, so this pen is a fun addition to the roster. I stumbled onto this pen during excessive Pinkoi browsing. Compared to some of my other pens, this pen put down a FINE line and is on the dryer side. I'm actually able to get subtle hatching effects when doing fast strokes, like you would expect from a pigment/fineliner.
I have had ink drip/glob from the sides of the fin when uncapping quickly (sometimes flinging onto my paper), though it doesn't leak down via gravity when I'm writing. Maybe it's a cap suction/vacuum thing. Now I try to be slower with my uncapping to prevent this. After using it for a bit (~a month?) I also found some wear on the lip of the section that interfaces with the inner cap. I went through the stock cartridge. I usually clean out the stock cartridge and refill it with a syringe, but the holes on the cartridge seem to be extra small (compared to say, Pilot) so it is harder to clean out. Now I'm using Noodler's Ink eel cactus fruit loaded up in the Schmidt converter, which seems to perform similarly to the stock cartridge. Since this ink is lubricated and tends to write wet, I thought it could be a good pair with this dryer, finer, pen. Also, Jake is a Pinkey fan (haha).
The packaging was equally minimal, fully made of paper, and non-excessive, which I truly appreciate. I really don't like all the plastic and foam that comes with some of my other pen boxes...
Here's a comparison with Austin / FPR Himalayan v2 GT...very different vibes.
Today's music post: Three Hour Drive by Alicia Keys feat. SiR (Colors Studios). A friend mentioned to me how Alicia sounds a bit like Utada Hikaru (and/or vice versa) in parts of this song.